More House Pictures

It really is a shame that pictures can't just jump off the camera onto the blog page! I know some of my readers are interested in seeing what the inside of our new house looks like. At least, I think you want to see them. Honestly, I'm not sure who my readers are these days since my blogging is extremely sporadic lately. On to the pictures...

This is a picture of the front exterior of the house. I only took this because I was taking pictures of my new ride that was parked on the street. (That's another post in itself!) You can see the hubs standing by the garage.

The master bedroom has been fairly done for a while now, but it's those darn pictures that don't jump off the camera onto the laptop that have kept me from posting these.

These are of my dresser wall and this image has already changed since we were the recipients of a new larger tv for the living room. Our old tv from the living room is now on my dresser. It's much larger and easier to read the onscreen guide from the bed! (Thanks Dad)

A view of the bed.

The lampstands have been sitting on the night stands since we moved without lampshades. I finally made it to Ikea to get these last week. I'm not sure if these curtains will stay forever or not. I actually need 2 more panels, but finding 2 more of these panels hasn't been a priority. They no longer sell them at Target so it'll take some serious hunting to find them.

Mirror with sconces. Nothing special.

The best part about this mirror is how easily it went up when I was in one of my get it done moods and hanging mirrors all by myself! It went up on about the 2nd try as I was contorting my body to hold 2 different hooks and look behind the mirror to see if the hooks were hitting the screws. I've not had near as many picturing hanging mishaps in this house as I have in previous houses. I guess I'm getting to be a better picture hanger with all of my experience and the help of Command Strips! Love those things! I'm actually considering painting these sconces at some point, but that's hanging out on the bottom of the project list with finding the 2 panels for the windows.

I wish I could take a good picture of the ceiling and the 3 different sets of lights on it. I tried today, but just can't get a picture worth posting.

More to come...

Not Quite Settled Yet

I think I psych myself up to think that every time we move it's going to be easier. No amount of psyching makes any move easier for me - not even moving back 'home' or at least to somewhat familiar territory close to family and old friends. There still is the process of reestablishing routines, getting kids signed up for school and finding childcare options for the little kids, figuring out where to buy groceries and finding the paper that has the best coupons.

I say all that to say this hasn't been an easy move for me. Not at all! I think I've mentioned before, but if you've ever read anything about 'spirited' children, I fit a lot of the descriptors as an adult. I don't do change well. I don't respond well to processes that don't make sense. I get easily frustrated when my mind has been made up that something is going to work a particular way and then it doesn't. My responses aren't good, either.

Pile on the change the fact that F5 has to be at school at 7:30am and you've got a tired, cranky out of sorts, not adjusting to change well wife and mother and an F4 and F1 who are out of sorts and sleep deprived, too. It's not pretty. It's not pleasant. I have had many moments over the past few weeks that I wish I could take back and have a do over, but that's not how life works.

Nonetheless, I'm pressing on. I'm trying to embrace our new home and our new life in our new city at our new post with grace, but that's not always the case.

One Step Closer

The home buying process has been a little more stressful than I imagined it would be. After being prequalified, I guess I just thought everything would go very smoothly. It seems like every other day I'm having to divulge more and more information to the mortgage company. Some times I know the answer right off hand and other times I have to go digging and hoping that I haven't made any serious mistake when filing our taxes or something. Our most recent hang up has been with the title to our van.

We bought the van with a loan from whoever the dealership we bought the van from used as their lender. We knew we were going to immediately pay it off with a low interest personal loan we were eligible for when Cpt was at Officer Candidate School. Apparently I paid off the loan with the initial lender and then never got a copy of the title! Oops! Honestly, in my mind we still are paying on the van, only for about 3 more months, so I never thought about us 'owning' the van outright and being the title holders. Thankfully, the underwriters for our mortgage are willing to take a written statement from us detailing why we don't and won't have the title to the van by the time we close. I think that's our final information hurdle!

We did our walk thru with the builder today to determine if there were any touch ups or repairs that needed to be done before closing. We only found some minor things like drawers that don't close flush, a light fixture that is coming loose on one side, and a noisy ceiling fan. Other than that, we just need the paint touched up in various places and we'll be good to go.

I am so excited and can't wait to get out of our apartment and into a house again! Not just any house, though - - OUR house.

Under Contract

A few weeks ago we did our Fort Hood househunting trip and it wasn't quite what I was anticipating. I never thought that we would actually make an offer on a house during this first trip, but we did. We had been looking for months online at houses in that area and had made one sweep through on a trip from Austin to Waco in August to get a better idea of exactly which neighborhoods we liked and didn't like. One of the neighborhoods we initially thought would be an option turned out to be a no go after we scoped it out on our drive through. So we were back to the drawing board and budget board to figure out how much we were willing to spend on this house investment.

A few weeks ago we finally got word that we would definitely be going to Fort Hood so we decided to do our first househunting trip over Columbus Day weekend. We had been in contact with the realtor and told her what we were looking for and the price range we wanted to stay in and all those details. Her initial list of houses she sent back was more than disappointing. Over half of them were in a neighborhood that we absolutely did not have any interest in living. We sent her some others that didn't make her cut that we were interested in seeing and went from there.

On househunting morning, she showed us 3 houses and while we were in the 2nd house she started talking about a house next door to her that had a similar layout to the one we were in and never said much about taking us to see it until a few houses later. All 3 of the first houses we saw, we really liked, but they were zoned to a high school or had the probability of being rezoned to a high school into which we don't want our home to feed. We saw 4 more houses and none of them were spectacular to us. Then she took us to her 'ace in the hole' house - the one right next door to her personal house! I think she was feeling us out to see if she really wanted us to be her neighbors.

I walked in the door and tried to not like it! Seriously!! It was above the price range we had initially set in our minds. It was a beautiful home from the floors, to the doors, to the lighting, to the counters and all the little touches that had been done to make this home feel like a custom home! There was absolutely nothing wrong with this house. It was perfect in so many ways.

We had to leave it to go see a house that was on our initial short list of houses that we were very interested in. This house was a beautiful home, but in a sketchy, unrestricted zoning area. There were some really nice houses around it, but there were also poorly taken care of homes and cars on cinder blocks! If this was a house that we were going to live in for the rest of our lives and never try to sell, I think we may have been more interested, but that's not the case right now.

The day of househunting was over and we were left to mull over our choices while eating a #1 from Chick Fil A! We were both still in shock over her 'ace in the hole' house and couldn't get it off our minds. We were really like every episode of HGTV's House Hunters you've ever seen and predicted that the people would choose the house that was out of their price range or over their initial budget. After deciding that this was the house we wanted, we called the realtor to get the contract going.

So this is what we're getting...

This is the view from the front door into the living room. These are ceramic tile floors that look like hardwoods. They are beautifully deceptive! Here is the limestone fireplace that will probably never have a fire built in it, so it's just for looks! The front exterior of the house is made from this same limestone, if I remember correctly. I don't even have a picture of the outside of the house! Shameful, I know.

Here is the kitchen with granite countertops, an island and ceramic tile backsplash. I can't wait to cook my first meal here and spend every night of my life scrubbing little fingerprints off of the stainless steel appliances! The eat in part of the kitchen is just to the left.

Finally is the jacuzzi tub that will probably rarely be used except maybe by the kids! This same tile work is done on the shower to the left.
These were the best pictures I could get. I can't wait to get our stuff in there and make it our home. It truly is a blessing from the Lord and I feel like it's a reward for practicing good discipline with our finances from the beginning of our marriage. If all goes according to plan, we'll have the keys in our hands by the end of next month!